The left-hand image is a Dawn FC (framing camera) image, which shows the apparent brightness of Vesta’s surface. The right-hand image is based on this apparent brightness image, which has had a color-coded height representation of the topography overlain onto it. The topography is calculated from a set of images that were observed from different viewing directions, which allows stereo reconstruction. The various colors correspond to the height of the area. The white and red areas in the topography image are the highest areas and the blue areas are the lowest areas. Octavia is the large crater that dominates the bottom right of the image. Octavia has a scalloped rim, which is fresher on one side and more degraded on the other. The topography image shows that Octavia formed on a slope: the high topography white area in the bottom right of the image slopes downhill to the low topography blue area in the top left of the image. A part of Octavia’s rim may have become degraded because Octavia formed on this slope and/ or this degradation may be due to the mass movement of material towards Octavia’s center. The ridge in Octavia’s center may have been formed by deposition of such material. There is a distinct small patch of dark material on Octavia’s bottom rim.
These images are located in Vesta’s Marcia quadrangle, just south of Vesta’s equator. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft obtained the apparent brightness image with its framing camera on Oct. 14, 2011. This image was taken through the camera’s clear filter. The distance to the surface of Vesta is 700 kilometers (435 miles) and the image has a resolution of about 70 meters (230 feet) per pixel. This image was acquired during the HAMO (high-altitude mapping orbit) phase of the mission. These images are lambert-azimuthalmap projected.
The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington D.C. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The framing camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR, and NASA/JPL.
Image Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA